Identity theft is an ever-growing concern: some of us shred our unwanted paper documents, but what about computer data?

When files are deleted or even when a hard disk is formatted none of the files are actually destroyed, and huge amounts of personal information could be retrieved by anyone with the inclination and technical know-how to try.

So, when it’s time to upgrade a hard disk – perhaps you’ve run out of disk space or you suspect that the current disk may be about to fail – it's necessary not only have to find a way of copying data onto the new disk, but also a method of erasing any private data from the old one.

Avanquest Diskcopy & Clean Professional is designed to automate both of these processes and comes with a selection of helpful disk utilities thrown in.

For those who want to give away or sell their old PCs, Diskcopy & Clean Professional will enable them to pass on the hard disk without worrying about any of the data being recovered.

It’s very easy to get going with the software as there’s nothing to install: just start up the computer with the CD in the drive. You are then presented with a simple desktop environment displaying a short menu of tasks. These include 'Automatic copy to an empty disk', 'Select hard disk to copy', 'Select partition to copy', 'Secure erase drive or partition' and 'Manual Partitioning'.

If you’re not familiar with these terms, then we would advise against attempting such potentially damaging procedures on the hard disk yourself – even with the aid of a software package like this one.

One you go beyond the initial menu, the technical level of the terminology used increases still further along with the level of expertise required. Avanquest could have made this software much easier for novices to use, but in this case that’s possibly not the best idea.

While this is a powerful program for those who know what they’re doing, it’s designed to erase entire hard disks irretrievably by overwriting them with random data multiple times – a task best performed by a knowledgeable user regardless of the tools available.